Ghost Town

So, with nothing else to do here, I took the job I do not want that is a 35-minute commute away. We'll see how things work out. I have to be there by 8:00 a.m. and the first week will be just two days because I already told them I will be traveling on Wednesday for the holiday. At least, with a job I don't have any expectations of other than filling my time and maybe giving me a little pocket money, I don't feel bad at all at telling them how and when I will work. I am truly hoping I will be pleasantly surprised after I start work there. Meanwhile, I will try to look at other local options for at least keeping up a marketable skill set.

I am looking forward to spending time in Atlanta again next week. Wondering how much I can do while I am there.

The area we live in now is dead most of the year and is mostly a retiree community. There are two 2-week convention seasons in Spring and in Autumn. Between that, every business closes it's doors except the bars, which are rather unimaginative. There must be some hidden pearls here but I have not yet made it out enough to find them. That said, I know it means that I really need to work on making my own groove happen.

mirror mirror

With any luck, I will have a mirror to groom myself in front of by Thursday night and a bathroom sink again by Sunday evening. The job that is a 30-minute drive from the house, that I interviewed for and decided I had no interest, in will not take no for an answer and they want me to come in at least as a temporary employee this week. I still don't have my own house key.

Nothing is working out for me this month, so far.

Friends in Georgia have invited us to spend Thanksgiving with them and I look forward to the possibility of doing that in the old neighborhood with people I know and love.

There is no joy in my life this month.

I am tired of living without a single room that is functional here. I would at least like to have one complete bathroom and a real bed to sleep on. If I can't have a job to work outside of the house, at least I'd like to have a house that didn't feel like a prison.

I do not want to be a joy-killer to someone who is living their dream of home ownership for the first time but he is making bad decisions. Rather than concentrate on having a functional home first and then addressing surface and aesthetic issues later, he has decided to immediately start remaking every room at once and doing all of the work himself. This means there is not a single room here that is functional.

One bathroom now has a chunk out of the tub from replacing the tile and there are no plans to replace the tub - he just intends to live with it. In that same bathroom, there is no sink now because he took out the pedestal sink that was in it and does not have one that will fit the uneven walls to go in now. And there is a tiny and constant leak of water that slowly rises out of the detached pipes were the sink was.

The other bathroom has no hot water and a rusted, nasty medicine cabinet.

The only bed is an inflatable one. It is a very nice inflatable bed that my mother gave us a couple of years ago, because we did not have a guest room and I wanted something other than the floor to accommodate overnight company. It was okay for a few nights but now I am waking up with weird bruises. I assume that is because the air mattress is so hard.

The bedroom closet had a set of racks and shelves in it that he dismantled because it looked cheap to him. There are now shelves in the empty little room that was the bedroom closet now so the only thing in there is the cat's litterbox.

I am still living out of boxes for most things. There is no TV. Thankfully, there is WiFi so it's not all bad. My office, with the exception of my computer, is still in boxes. Somehow, my file cabinet was upturned in shipping and unloaded inches from the closet door. This means 1. I will need a handtruck and help to move the file cabinet enough to open the drawers to access all my folders, etc. 2. when I did manage to open the top drawer just a couple of inches, I could see paper was everwhere. I will have to empty both drawers and reorganize every scrap of paper in the cabinet when I can get inside of it.

I no longer have a food processor, blender, or slow-cooker.

The backyard is full of discarded moving boxes that I am still cutting down and putting in cans as they fit, week by week. We have three bins for city pickups: one to hold all household trash for the week,  one for recycling that they pick up every two weeks, and one for yard trash. They prefer leaves to be put in clear plastic bags in this city - not paper. I see no logic in this. I think everything goes on the same truck and ultimately into the same landfill regardless of what it is. If it does not fit in one bin, it does not get picked up. I am filling the bins as much as possible for each pickup until we can hire a service to pick up the large stuff that will need to be hauled off by professionals.

The rest of the house is in need of painting before any of the shelving and furniture can be set up in a useful manner. Every wall is covered with holes, putty, and primer.  Nearly every electrical socket is dangling out of the wall.

The back sunroom/porch is a dumping ground of tools and parts.

New Digs

The new digs are still a dusty shambles but I am slowly just going ahead and unloading boxes while just wiping things down with a damp cloth. As much as we tried to get rid of before the move, it seems as though the household possessions have doubled in size while the amount of space we have in a house has shrunk.

The cat is having trouble adjusting too but she's on the mend. After not eating, drinking, or pooping or coming out from under the covers on the bed for the first 36 hours in the new house, Ellie appears to be back to normal. She is up to her old tricks and appetite. 

My beautiful hair color has started to fade already because of the cheap shampoo I've had to use until I can find my color-safe shampoo. There are two large bottles of it somewhere in the massive maze of boxes and bags here. I am also doing a bit of Amazon shopping for things that I suspect were left behind, as I find I need them. Probably gonna go broke on Amazon but its so darned convenient and, with John's Amazon Prime sharing, most of it has free shipping.

I did not know we had an active phone land line into the house until I started getting political robot calls. I am kinda glad to be out of touch with the news and media a bit for now, at least until all is said and done with the elections. I'd rather not be sucked into the maelstrom of rage and propaganda on television and radio this week.